My recent studio work has been influenced by early archival photographs pertaining to western Canadian colonial history. What interests me most in these 19^th century photographs are their imperfections – their faded and physically damaged appearances – their abstractions.  I exploit these found abstractions as I imitate and paint them with a critical intention upon figurative under-paintings of the prospectors and colonial profiteers derived from the very same photographs.  Applying these metaphorical scars, these palimpsests of imperfection, is a response to a questionable adherence to an heroic and sentimental past.